Affiliate marketing is a steady source of income for many blogs, including ours. And Amazon’s affiliate program is one of the largest and most popular programs for bloggers.
However, long Amazon affiliate links can look ugly and untrustworthy to visitors. On the other hand, clean, short links not only look better but are also easier to share and manage.
In our years of experience with affiliate marketing, we have found that short and attractive affiliate links lead to more conversions.
That’s why in this guide, we’ll show you how to easily create short Amazon affiliate links in WordPress.
Why Use Short Affiliate Links for Amazon?
By default, an Amazon affiliate link is a long URL containing strings and IDs like this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470560541/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0470560541&linkCode=as2&tag=wpb09-20
This link is lengthy, and it is hard to look at. It also increases your chances of accidentally making a typo and breaking the URL.
One possible solution is to cloak affiliate links in WordPress using a plugin like ThirstyAffiliates. Using an affiliate link manager allows you to redirect users while using your own custom short URLs like this:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/refer/prowpThe problem with using a cloaked URL is that users do not know where they will be taken when they click on that link.
Meanwhile, you may want to show users that they will be redirected to Amazon’s website because Amazon is a trusted brand name. This could potentially increase your earnings, particularly if you mostly recommend products from Amazon.
Thankfully, Amazon comes with its own short URL option that allows affiliates to easily transform any Amazon link into a short URL using the ‘amzn.com’ domain name.
Video Tutorial
If you prefer written instructions, keep on reading.
Creating Short Amazon Affiliate Links
There are two types of short URLs that you can create for your Amazon affiliate links. The first one uses the ‘Amazon.com’ domain name.
You simply need to add ‘/dp/yourproductid/?tag=youraffiliatetag.’
Take a look at this example:
http://amazon.com/dp/0470560541/?tag=wpb09-20
You can create an even shorter URL by using the ‘amzn.com’ domain name. Simply remove the /dp/ prefix and add your product ID with your affiliate tag, like so:
http://amzn.com/0470560541/?tag=wpb09-20
Bonus Tip: Building an Amazon Affiliate Store in WordPress
An Amazon affiliate store is a website that promotes Amazon products using unique affiliate referral links.
Unlike running your own online store, you don’t need to manage inventory, orders, or shipping. Amazon handles these aspects, allowing you to focus on promoting affiliate links.
Plus, with access to over 75 million products on Amazon, you can find items that match your site’s niche, whether it’s food, photography, lifestyle, or something else.
For more on this topic, you can see our guide on how to build an Amazon affiliate store using WordPress.
That’s all! We hope this article helped you easily create short Amazon affiliate links in WordPress. Next, you may also want to see our guide on how to write affiliate product reviews or our list of the best affiliate tracking and management software for WordPress.
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kzain
I’ve been using Amazon affiliate links on my blog, but I’ve been using long, cumbersome links. I had no idea there were so many easy ways to shorten them! I’m excited to try out the Pretty Links plugin and make my affiliate links more shareable. One question I have is: do these shortened links affect the tracking or reporting of affiliate earnings in any way? I want to make sure I’m not losing any valuable insights or commissions. Thanks again for the informative article
WPBeginner Support
They do not affect tracking or earnings.
Admin
Jaswinder Kaur
Thanks for the Video Tutorial and Reading Instructions.
I already use short links for my Site!!
John
How do you do Canonical URL so crawlers will see only Amazon.com instead of https://www.wpbeginner.com/refer/prowp
Bob Smith
Cloaking the links is explicitly against the Amazon affiliate operating agreement and will get your account terminated if/when they find it. So it’s probably not the best idea to be recommending it….
The specific language is: “you must not use a link shortening service in a manner that makes it unclear that you are linking to an Amazon Site.” It can be found half-way down here:
hksingh
very nice information but i just want to know that ,can we use amazon affiliate link on articles because it will very helpful to get traffic on my website and amazon affiliate link
Marcello Ricky
Really helpful article.Thanks for shareing.
Fahad khan
Can i put up a link for amazon.in home page and if any one going through this link and ended in purchasing any item from amazon in any category, will i be able to get a commission?
Linnea
Good tip on the shortened links! I actually just found out about the shortened version of links that use the amzn.com domain. I am the author of the Wordpress Plugin Check Amazon Links and currently it won’t check shortened links, but I am trying to figure out if there’s a way I can add that feature. Right now my plugin can check any amazon.com link that has the ASIN in the URL. When I started writing the plugin I didn’t realize just how many variations there are in how people link to Amazon…. Well live and learn I guess!
Kim Smyth
So glad I found this post. This is what I’ve been trying to figure out how to do for over a month! Can I even do this if I have very few page views? I just recently got my social sites working right and haven’t spent enough time marketing yet.
WPBeginner Support
Yes you can.
Admin